So to inaugurate my new collection of 40k terrain, my pal Pete, a.k.a. Bugsculptor dropped by and decided to show me what the interior of a Tyranid’s digestive system looked like. I’m still in the process of assembling all my Chaos Marines (something which will still take quite a while), but I was able to piece together 1850. Instead of giving a couple battle reports, I’m going to show you my list and say what I thought about the unit through both the games I played.

Huron Blackheart – The man of the hour! Huron is quite nice, his random psychic powers are often helpful, and he’s not too shabby in close combat. Infiltrating was decidedly less useful against Tyranids, but I definitely can see it being handy. Overall, I love him, A+.

Sorcerer(Level 3, Spell Familiar, Chaos Bike) – Loaded up with Biomancy, a Sorcerer becomes quite a threat, even with Shadow in the Warp around, the Spell Familiar helps quite a lot, significantly increasing the chances of getting a spell off.

Helbrute(Reaper Autocannon, Power Scourge) – Wow, what a piece. I ran 2 Helbrutes, neither one did anything worth while and were easily removed by a single turn of shooting, or just getting slapped in the face by a Trygon. In the future, I may try them with Reaper Autocannon and Missile Launcher, just to get some firepower out of my Elites, but I don’t think they’re much use other than that.

10 Chaos Marines(2x Plasma Guns, Bolters, Bolt Pistols, Close Combat Weapons, Veterans of the Long War, Champion with Power Sword) – Good all around troops, effective shooting, not bad in combat. A bit on the pricey side, I may drop the Close Combat Weapons in the future, but for now I’m going to keep them as-is.

Chaos Rhino(Havoc Launcher) – Actually, not bad! In one game, it was first blood, which I expected I suppose, though in the second game, sitting back and plopping out S5 blasts actually was quite nice.

20 Cultists(Autoguns, 2 Heavy Stubbers) – A surprising amount of dakka for not many points. Decent for camping objectives and even spitting out a few bullets.

20 Cultists(2 Flamers) – Similar to the dakka cultists, they’re good at camping objectives, but I wouldn’t trust them to do much more.

Heldrake – No brainer, as the internets say, this wins the chaos book.

8 Chaos Bikers(2 Meltaguns, Veterans of the Long War, Champion with Power Sword) – A good buy for their points, resilient, fast, shooty and choppy, when combined with the Sorcerer they can be quite a threat. I’d bump them up to 10 if I had the points.

5 Warp Talons(Mark of Slaanesh,Veterans of the Long War) – Ugh… I really wanted them to do something, but against nids, everything is either T3 or T6. They can spend time chopping up gaunts and end up losing 1-2 a turn for little gain, or end up fighting a monstrous creature which is a pain to wound even with the re-rolls. The 5++ is nice, but their lack of strength doesn’t help against the threats that will be ignoring their armor anyhow.

5 Havocs(4 Autocannons, Veterans of the Long War) – A steal at 120 points, can’t wait to build my second unit of them. Some disposable wounds would be nice, but for how cheap the unit is, it doesn’t really matter.

Maulerfiend(Lasher Tendrils) – This monster is going to be a huge pain for Monstrous Creatures, reducing most of them to 1 crush attack means that there is a really good chance that you’ll tie up a monster for a few turns, buying time to deal with the other threats. Additionally, it’s fast enough to counter attack just about anywhere, or keep up with the bikes if you want to use it more offensively.

Overall, I had a decided lack of AP 2/3 shooting to deal with the Monstrous Creatures, but that will hopefully be fixed when I get my second Heldrake built. Also, I’m not a huge fan of the large units of cultists. They take up a ton of space in the deployment zone, otherwise they’re sucking down large blasts, in the future I’ll probably run units of 10.

About Adam B

Despot of the Black Legion, Seneschal of House Terryn, and Sentinel of Titan. Tyrant of the Frostgorger Tribe, and Guardian of Loren.

taipan567

Helbrutes are shit, get Terminators instead. Mark of Tzeentch as well, that makes them a pretty good tarpit to his MC’s.
I’d get another squad of those Chaos Marines. Upgrades are fine, I usually give them Mark of Khorne and drop the bolters for chainswords, but your preference. Get rid of the Cultists, Nids eat them easily.
Heldrake is king against Nids, they don’t have any Skyfire or good anti-tank anyway, and the baleflamer is beautiful. I’d squeeze in another one if you can.
Bikers probably want Mark of Nurgle, to make them effective as a tarpit. I’d go fist on the Champ, you’ll want it for bashing MC’s. Plasma over melta, Nids have no tanks and you are Relentless in any case.
Warp Talons are the new Spawn, its quite amazing how a cool unit in its background is so poorly executed and costed in practise. Ditch them.
Havoks are awesome, although I wonder if heavy bolters might be a bit better against Nids. You’ll cause more wounds, and the MC’s get their 3+ armour against both.
Maulerfiend is nice, you’ll fuck up Tervigons pretty easily. Tyrgons and Tyrants go ahead of you though, so just hope your 5++ and ‘IWND’ save you.

Bugsculptor

Maulerfiends don’t have many attacks, so it would take them a few turns to chew through any 6W MC. Also… I run at least one tervigon with crushing claws, which would still have several S10 smash attacks to ruin the mauler’s day. I must admit my Swarmlord got a little lucky against the only Mauler combat we had, using his preferred enemy to help guarantee a hit and blowing it up with his one smash attack.

Most of these tips are good, but remember that Adam is trying to build a TAC list rather than just tailoring a list to wreck my Tyranids. He does still need melta to pop tanks and it actually does have a useful function against nids also – those meltaguns were pretty much the only thing he was running that could instant death my Doom of Malantai.

I ran a couple of lists against him – one a fairly well optimized tournament list with lots of MCs and the Doom of Malantai and the other a horde list with 60 gaunts, 20 stealers in a pod and a nasty little Iron Arm + Swarmlord deathstar. Both my lists are full of great units and I know how to play them pretty solidly by now, so Adam had his work cut out. As he had a few sub-optimal units in the mix, it was… as he said himself… educational.

I must say, if I’m ending up playing against two or more heldrakes it may well be time for me to finish painting my flyrant. I’ve been doing fine without it recently, but I’ll need a little skyfire to stop those guys wrecking my day.

http://twitter.com/BKellyCS Benjamin Kelly

Good response, and glad we got the “remember that Adam is trying to build a TAC list rather than just tailoring a list to wreck my Tyranids” bit. I do hate “Do this, do that. You NEED these. Those are crap.” lists; as if everything’s so black and white.

Nids do have some pretty hench anti-flyers in the shape of 2x TL Brain-leech Carnifex’. 12 Twin-linked S6 shots. Roll well enough and/or against rear armour and it strips those hull points away.

http://thediceabide.com Adam B (TheDiceAbide)

Which is exactly what happened last game!

Bugsculptor

Yep – they’re even more powerful on a skyfire winged tyrant. With Skyfire and twin linking I managed to roll seven penetrating hits and one glance on the rear armour of a Heldrake.

It was lucky rolling, but there aren’t many guns in the game with the combined rate of fire and strength to even get that lucky!

http://thediceabide.com Adam B (TheDiceAbide)

Go ahead and gloat… I’ll figure out this Chaos book well enough to beat your clearly over powered Tyranids.

Bugsculptor

I’ll try and remember not to cheat next game. That’ll help.

If you will it, dude, it is no dream.

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